I am an entrepreneur and communications expert from Salt Lake City, founder of Snapp Conner PR, and author of Beyond PR: Communicate Like A Champ The Digital Age, available at http://amzn.to/1AO0PxX. I am also a frequent author and speaker on Business Communication. The opinions I express (especially when tongue in cheek) are entirely my own. My newsletter is the Snappington Post, available at http://bit.ly/1iv67Wk

Should You Lead? Here's Why (Or Why Not)

I just finished reading Rob’s new book, now availableat Amazon, Leadership Is Hell: How to Manage Well and Escape with Your Soul. The book is a literal labor of love, as author proceeds go to the USC Neighborhood Academic Initiative launched in 1992 by USC President Steven B. Sample (he was president from 1991 to August 2010) to make college education accessible to the next generation of young leaders.

Back to the question at hand: Should you lead?Fairly well every person in business is conditioned to work for the chance to lead. From childhood, every youth who is asked what they want to be when they grow up is likely to respond with some variation of “in charge.” Too often, however, the desire to lead is a Faustian bargain, Asghar says. He maintains that most leadership guidance is designed to play offyour ego instead of actually shaping your ego, which must be the exact size of greatness to allow you to manage effectively while also allowing you to survive with your life and soul intact.

Rob Asghar is a Los Angeles-based author and management expert who has written for more than 30 organizations worldwide (including Forbes.com)

Leadership often looks like Paradise from the outside and Hades from within. Like parenting, it seems romantic when you’re not immersed in the soiled diapers of infancy or the surly attitude of an unappreciative teen. In many respects, leadership is the world’s most thankless job. As an entrepreneur you are likely compelled by the glorious opportunity to be your own boss; yet in reality you end up working for everyone, from investors to employees to vendors to customers, when the buck stops with you. If any of the following seven roads apply to you, you should take corrective action immediately, Asghar says, or acknowledge that your greatest contribution to the world (and your greatest happiness) may not involve directing the efforts of others. And if that’s the case, that’s just fine.

Road 1: You have blind spots that keep you from succeeding. As a leader, it is tough to consider that you’re the only person in the room who doesn’t see the Achilles’ heel that will prevent you from realizing your dreams. Leaders don’t like to see blind spots. But employees (especially the most difficult ones) will revel in making them known. What to do? Asghar recommends a thorough 360-degree view that will allow you to discover and overcome your leadership flaws. It may be painful. The leadership experts of Zenger Folkman report that top line leaders are generally prone to sit out the process of 360 degree reviews, considering development efforts a process that should be directed primarily at others. Not so.

Road 2: Your radar is working harder than your compass. You’re the sort of person who can walk into a situation and can read other people’s feelings. You want everyone to be happy—more importantly, you want them to be happy with you. You get derailed easily, changing your mind and your direction in the face of any resistance. If this is you, it’s time to find your own True North and to allow that result to drive your leadership efforts.

Road 3: Your compass is working harder than your radar. You’re trampling on other people’s heads on your way to your goals. You have certainty about your direction. But you need to learn to interpret other people’s hopes as well to find a path that allows all to proceed.

Road 4: You need to let go of what you’re not good at. You may be charismatic, you may enjoy attention, and many people may enjoy you—all good leadership traits–but you may still be a mediocre manager who is unskilled at follow-through, budgeting or tough decisions. Conversely, you may be great at the behind-the-scenes brilliance, but you’ll never be the face of the organization. (Said one of our agency’s clients one day, “I’m deep fried turkey fat. Great for developing programs, but I’ll never be the face you should put in front of a crowd.”) You may need to admit that it’s time to hand some of your tasks to others who can manage them better.

Road 5: You’re trying to prove yourself instead of just expressing yourself. Because you’re on a desperate quest for respect, you haven’t discovered the Zen of getting playfully lost in the work that you love without regard for the outcomes. You need to give yourself permission to dothe things you love instead of beingthe person you are conscious of wanting others to see.

Road 6: You’d never admit it, but you still secretly think that it just might be all about you. You see leadership as your best chance to put the spotlight on yourself, leave a legacy, and prove your merit to friends, to family and foe. You need to discover how much more appreciation you’ll get (and will deserve to get) by putting the spotlight on the others around you.

Road 7: You never can say goodbye. Like Julius Caesar (or Joe Paterno), you risk damaging your legacy by staying too long. You need to know when it’s time to let the mantle of leadership go.

Any way you look at it, it’s a messy job to manage other imperfect human beings, particularly while we are undeniably imperfect ourselves. There is a continual spotlight (even a floodlight) on leaders. Much is at stake. And there is no getting around the fact that not every day or every experience is good.

With attention to the seven roads, perhaps you can find the right focus and shape to make your role as a leader of others a very good thing. But the greatest moral to Asghar’s story is this: All of us should be free to realize we can make a great impact on the world without managing people. For example, most people will make a bigger impact as teachers, not principals (even though we may envy or even desire the illusion of power).

If you want to lead – or you already are leading–make the effort to get your ego “just right.” In any case, losing your illusions about leadership will allow you to find the authentic happiness that can lead to the most meaningful legacy of all. Finally, a personal note: what I enjoyed most about Rob Asghar’s book is that he is a brilliant and engaging writer. On that basis alone, it is a wonderful read.

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Musk dwells in the navel of Deer but wandering for the same in the jungle. As a corollary , the answer of leadership dwells in its ingredients which is very much present within self and not outside world.

Why the employees fail to be leader or why leaders fail to become the LEADER in TRUE Spirit because of deficiency syndrome within self which either works as stumbling block or put stains in the leadership status. Simply acquiring the position in this world can not make a leader of leader in true sense. Status or leadership both are different.

Leadership – a product of attitude and aptitude when properly synchronized by spontaneously flow of knowledge and behavior , it shines the glory of leader. Captivating within self by sense of guilt& deficiency and pretending before the world for injecting a sense of sharing & caring and enriched with high IQ generally trapped in temporary phase which becomes visible at the time & place due to inter-play of circumstantial factors.

This article is so spot on! Being a leader can easily blind you to the things you can see when you are sitting on the sidelines. And it has been a rude awakening for me. I dreamed of having my own business, and the first year i have never worked as hard in my life. At first I was running off the initial spark, but around 6 months in I realized that I couldn’t go back to having a job, and that I had to maintain my hunger at a very high level to lift it off the ground. Luckily my team, and in particular my partner really got their game together and have surprised me so much. It’s all well and good being the leader, running the company and taking the plaudits, but it literally wouldn’t have happend without them.

Like you said, you can never say goodbye. I am constantly thinking about my business, at the weekend, at the gym, in the car, in bed, even at christmas dinner i was thinking about. Being a leader is extremely difficult, but the buzz is worth it. Balancing the compass with the radar is something I have struggled with. In order to lead, you need a great team. What a fantastic article. In fact I’m going to read it again.

this is one of the most sensible, and sensitive articles I have read in a long time. I have always struggled to manage myself appropriately in the office environment and I am sure I have strayed from all of the above paths in my time, to the frustration of others! We have no choice but to keep going and trying to improve but sometimes its hard to know where to look for good advice. Some of the best leaders are the people we will never hear about. As they say, if you want to know if a fish is bad, look at its head! It’s vital to be honest with oneself and try to eliminate those blind spots for the benefit of oneself and for the benefit of others. If only there were more good advice like this available. Maybe there is, I will keep reading! It’s great to know people are thinking about and discussing these ideas with such scientific precision, because it’s as important and complex as brain surgery in many ways, in fact it is brain surgery.